Morning Digest: Heatwaves push power demand in North India to record high; 41 airports across the country receive hoax bomb threats, and more

The Hindu Morning Digest gives a select list of stories to start the day. Read the top news today on June 19, 2024

Amid the longest spell of heatwaves in the past 15 years, the power demand in North India surged to 89 GW (89,000 MW) , the highest ever for a single day. To meet this demand, nearly 25%-30% of power had to be “imported” from outside the region, the Power Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. Most of the northern States continue to reel under heatwaves, with Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh reporting a maximum temperature of 47.6 degrees Celsius.

As many as 41 airports in the country received an email threat warning of a bomb on their premises and all of them were later found out to be hoax calls. Airport sources said that on Tuesday, 41 airport directors received a bomb threat mail at 12.40 p.m. The mail was received from exhumedyou888@gmail.com stating: “There are explosives hidden in the airport. The bombs will soon explode. You will all die.” All airports constituted Bomb Threat Assessment Committees and declared the threat as “non-specific” or hoax. 

On the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bihar’s Nalanda University to inaugurate its new campus on Wednesday, the university‘s interim vice-chancellor professor Abhay Kumar Singh termed the occasion “historic”. Mr. Singh said after the Prime Minister’s visit, the university will become more popular at the international level. At present, students from 26 countries are studying here.

The accident involving the Sealdah Kanchanjunga Express, which claimed 10 lives, has brought to the fore once again the delay in installing Kavach, an indigenously developed automatic train protection (ATP) system, across the country’s rail network. On Monday, a goods train hit the Kanchanjunga Express between Rangapani and Chatterhat in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district, derailing four coaches of the passenger train and five wagons of the goods train.

Saddam Qureshi, the sole survivor in which three cattle transporters from Uttar Pradesh were allegedly attacked by a mob in Chhattisgarh’s Arang earlier this month, succumbed to his injuries. On June 7, two cattle transporters, Guddu Khan (35) and Chand Miya Khan (23), were found dead under suspicious circumstances after being allegedly chased by a mob.

The death toll from a goods train’s collision with the Sealdah Kanchanjunga Express rose to ten on Tuesday, with a six-year child succumbing to injuries at the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. The Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) will begin his inquiry into the cause of the accident on Wednesday, even as the Railways seemed to walk back its initial claim that human error was behind the accident by acknowledging that the automatic signalling system was not working along the route.

The highest number of complaints received by the National Commission for Women so far this year has been from Uttar Pradesh followed by Delhi and then Maharashtra. Strife-torn Manipur has recorded only three complaints of “crime against women” with the commission. Of the total 12,648 complaints received by the NCW till now in 2024, 6,492 were from Uttar Pradesh.